


The Place Called Lost

by jazzjo



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-03 10:06:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2847125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jazzjo/pseuds/jazzjo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Bus would be landed on Christmas day, just enough time for one visit. Melinda would be using hers to see her old S.O., to straightened the head on her shoulders that had just been knocked askew from all that had happened. After all, Peggy had made her find herself once, she could do it again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Place Called Lost

Melinda would never admit it, if you had dared to ask her. Not once would she have admitted to anyone — not even Phil Coulson — that she had been far too close to leaving the agency back in the days right after Bahrain had happened. 

 

That she would have if not for her S.O. talking her down from that metaphorical ledge. 

 

Mulling over the aftermath of the biggest setback that had occurred in the entirety of her S.H.I.E.L.D. career, Melinda pulled a leather jacket over her tactical suit and exited her pod on the Bus. They would be landed in this S.H.I.E.L.D. hangar for just a day — it was Christmas, after all — and she had someone to see. 

 

The route to the nursing home was one she had walked several times before. It took nearly an hour on foot, but she had always done it this way. 

 

After all, Peggy had been the one to teach her that walking and breathing cleared one’s mind. That a clear mind could deal with any amount of turmoil and tragedy. 

 

As she put one foot rhythmically in front of the other, the soles of her shoes made no semblance of a sound against the pavement and her senses were still on high alert, as they always were. Each block she walked brought back more of her days under Agent Carter, memories gathering of how Peggy had been her start at S.H.I.E.L.D.

 

* * *

 

_An arm stopped her as she stepped out of the dojo with her gi tucked under her arm, tied in a neat parcel with her black belt._

 

_“Melinda May?” A voice had questioned, high enough that Melinda released some of the fear that had gripped her the moment contact was made, “My name is Peggy Carter. May I speak with you a moment?”_

 

_Instincts (and many years of martial arts training) prompted Melinda to turn on the ball of her left foot to face the presence behind her, her free hand still steeled for combat if it became necessary. Once she had reorientated herself to face the woman who had approached her, Melinda’s eyes met with kind ones, steely and determined, but warm all the same._

 

_“How do I know I can trust you?” Melinda replied, not unkindly but wary all the same._

 

_Peggy allowed the bright scarlet of her painted lips to curve into a smile, before parting them to reassure her matter-of-factly, “Your mother is Lian May, CIA Operative. I’ve worked with her multiple times. We need not speak until we have reached your home, if it would make you more comfortable. I will walk ahead, even.”_

 

_“Lead the way, Miss Carter.”_

 

_They had entered the door to the apartment that Melinda shared with her mother, Peggy greeting Lian with fond familiarity as she stepped in._

 

_“Now,” Peggy had begun once they were seated with tea that Melinda had served, once her mother had shot her a brief glance or two, “I am an agent with a organisation which was up until very recently called the S.S.R. Now it is S.H.I.E.L.D., because the boys’ club that monopolises it loves their cheesy acronyms. We would like to recruit you.”_

 

_“Why?”_

 

_“Potential, Melinda,” Peggy replied, “Immense potential we see in you, coupled with your obvious discipline and capability for doing things that seem well beyond your physical possibilities. You would be a great asset to our agency.”_

 

_Leaning away from Lian’s place at the table and speaking conspiratorially to Melinda, Peggy half joked with a smirk, “We wanted to get you before the CIA could swoop in and recruit you for their own agenda.”_

 

* * *

 

Signing in on the log book that the receptionist presented her with, she nodded at the status update that she was granted from Peggy’s regular nurse before turning to make her way to the room. Rapping crisply on the door, Melinda waited for the authoritative ‘ _enter_ ’ before stepping foot in the room. 

 

“Merry Christmas, Peggy,” Melinda began, embracing the wizened woman in the hospital bed.

 

“Melinda May,” Peggy had sighed, her eyes scanning over the woman who had once been her charge as Melinda sat in the chair beside her bed, “Merry Christmas, sweetheart. What brings you here on today of all days?”

 

“My mother sends her best wishes, and her hope that you are doing well,” Melinda passed along, searching her former S.O.’s eyes for the blankness that would so often overtake them sometime in the middle of their visits, “So does Phil. The rest of our team would as well, no doubt, if they knew I were here.”

 

Peggy’s eyes sparkled as she chuckled wryly, teasing Melinda with her next words, “Kids off for a short Christmas break, then? And you come to visit an old woman like me?”

 

“They’re good kids. A little lost, if anything,” Melinda remarked, her eyes flickering off to the side momentarily. 

 

“Like you were,” Peggy interjected, “They’ll find their way. You did.”

 

Melinda allowed one side of her mouth to curve into a wry smile before responding, “I had you to guide me, Peggy. All they have is Coulson, who’s too busy trying to keep what is left of S.H.I.E.L.D. together to train them.”

 

“And you,” She reminded Melinda, “They have you.”

 

* * *

 

_Peggy strode down the halls of the staff quarters in S.H.I.E.L.D. Headquarters, her precise footsteps taking her directly to Melinda May’s room, right at the end of the hallway. Knocking twice, she did not wait for the ‘enter’ that would not come before entering the code that Melinda had once given her to let herself in._

 

_The room was lit by the garish fluorescent lights overhead, casting a sickly yellow around the room. On her twin sized cot sat the hunched over form of Melinda May, all of five feet and four inches, the weight of the world on her nineteen year old shoulders._

 

_“It wasn’t your call, sweetheart,” Peggy began, her voice low and breaking for the girl before her, “You had your orders. You followed them. You did your job, and you did it well. The reason you are fast becoming a legend is the fact that you can do the jobs no one else can do.”_

 

_Melinda glanced up at her through her tear laden lashes, the glint in her eyes just about as steely as her voice when she spoke, “Is that my job, then, Peggy? My skill set is useful only in taking out people and neutralising whoever is in our way?”_

 

_“Those people you had to take out today, Melinda, they made a choice,” Peggy explained, “They made a choice to stand on the wrong side of the line, and we have to take our stand as well. If not for what you did today, many more innocents would have lost their lives.”_

 

_“Greater good, huh?” Melinda scoffed, her voice losing its bite and anger as the words fell from her lips, “Blood on my hands for the greater good.”_

 

* * *

 

Melinda refilled Peggy’s glass of water as the older woman dozed. For a while there she had gone back into one of her episodes, those warm eyes now wrinkled and worn at the edges suddenly a blank and bottomless void. A nurse had come in to convince her to rest, and to remind Melinda that she did not always come out of one of these episodes immediately. 

 

Melinda knew she would. Peggy always came through for her, and they had yet to finish their conversation. In their line of work, the both of them knew better than to leave words unsaid. 

 

The woman in question stirred with a guttural cough, one that rattled through her ribcage as Melinda leapt to raise the bed and hand her the glass of water. 

 

“Melinda May,” She had croaked through the sips she took, “Merry Christmas, sweetheart.”

 

“Merry Christmas, Peggy,” Melinda reiterated, her words trailing off before the next sentence could begin.

 

Peggy handed the glass back to her to place on the table, parting her chapped lips to speak crisply, “You’re afraid of something. What could it be that strikes fear in you of all people?”  


“Some of the agents on the team, they’re just kids,” Murmured Melinda, each word spoken in equal parts horror and wariness, “Fitz and Simmons have barely had field training, and Skye never really went through the proper training process. Before Bobbi, Trip and the others came aboard, they were always in direct line of fire. It’s scarred them all, for sure.”

 

“Was it their choice?” 

 

Melinda stalled for a moment, her head paused between a nod and a shake before she hesitantly spoke, “They chose the path. They chose to serve S.H.I.E.L.D. I chose them.”

 

“Like you, then,” Peggy concluded, her smile lines becoming more pronounced, “They will give up their innocence to serve the agency, but they will be alright with the right guidance.”

 

* * *

 

_When she had first put in that request to transfer, Fury had Peggy brought into the Triskelion and sat them down together._

 

_Peggy had already turned her letter of resignation into a request to transfer. Evidently Fury thought she could take it another step further and keep her in the field._

 

_“I’m not here to tell you to not transfer, no matter what Nicky the one-eyed wonder over there thinks he put me here to do,” Peggy established, rolling her eyes at the man sitting in what had once been her chair, “I just want to know why.”_

 

_“I’m done, Peggy,” Melinda sighed, no fight in her voice or her posture, “I’m done with the blood on my hands and the horrors that I cannot stop seeing. There is no way I can stop utilising this very specific skill set unless I remove myself from the field entirely.”_

 

_“You’re afraid of something,” She probed._

 

_“I’m not an army. I’m not a machine. I’m an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.,” She raised a hand to pinch at the bridge of her nose as she spoke, “But I don’t know what that means anymore beyond being ‘The Cavalry’.”_

 

_Peggy had squeezed her shoulder, told her that she could have the chance to get back on the horse one way, and to take it if she was ready to. Once Melinda had nodded once and strode out of Fury’s office and directly to her new cubicle, Peggy shuffled to the Director’s desk and smacked him upside the head._

 

_“You give her time,” She declared resolutely, “You give her time to heal and time to put herself back together, but you do not give up on her. She’ll be back one day. There is no way someone like Melinda May will stand down forever.”_

 

* * *

 

“No field training, huh?” Peggy chuckled wryly at the prospect, eyes twinkling as she regarded her former charge. 

 

 “They’re barely qualified to be out in the field,” She replied, “And one’s S.O. ended up being Hydra. He only ever taught her how to fight in a way that he could always beat.”

 

“But you can teach them, like I taught you.” 

 

Melinda smile mutedly, lowering her head before she murmured, “I can’t teach them things I myself never mastered.”

 

“None of us are perfect, sweetheart, not even the legends,” Peggy asserted, “Especially the legends. But they’ll learn from you all the same. Let them get lost on their own, then help them find their way back. Some scars make you remember forever to never make the same mistake twice.”

 

* * *

 

_The day the orders came in, in a manila folder stamped scarlet with ‘CONFIDENTIAL’ and delivered direct to her in the hands of Maria Hill, Melinda walked the route once more. She rose to her feet gripping the folder she had read thrice over, leaving her cubicle in Administration and led herself to the bedside of a woman once painted red._

 

_“He’s alive,” She gasped, setting herself down heavily in the chair, “And I’m supposed to report back on my best friend because he might go insane.”_

 

_Peggy lay beneath crisp white linens, eyes closed and breathing even._

 

_“This was what you meant, wasn’t it,” Melinda ruminated, “When you said that I was there to do the jobs no one else could.”_

 

_No reply came but the soft breaths and the drip drip dripping of water from the sink behind them._

 

_“He’ll hate me for this. Go on about trust and betrayal and loyalties. But I’ll end up doing it anyway.”_


End file.
